


Something To Hang On To

by GretchenSinister



Series: The Human Stories [4]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 01:48:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20368633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "Oh my gosh. It would just KILL my feels to have Jamie be like 17-18 when he stops believing in Jack, but Jack still follows him around because he was his first believer and he wants to keep him safe.And so Jamie goes to the lake or the beach or something with some friends to go swimming, and knocks his head or gets dragged in by the tide and ends up being dragged underwater and not being able to breathe.Of course this is like Jack’s worst nightmare and the second he sees Jamie drowning he has to overcome his fear of drowning to dive underneath and rescue him. Afterward, no one knows how he got out but Jamie looks back and sees a bit of frost lingering on the top of the water. ;A;+ If Jamie sees him afterward.++ If Jack bursts into total, uncontrollable tears afterward."Jack says goodbye to Jamie, but months later, an incident involving a pontoon platform at a lake proves that he’s not really gone. I mostly focus on Jamie in this, and I don’t get either bonus, but I’m actually pretty pleased with the part that takes place at the lake.





	Something To Hang On To

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 10/26/2016.

_“I have to let you go. The others…they’ve explained why, and it makes sense to me. I…Jamie…”  
  
“But, but it won’t work,” Jamie said. “I can’t stop believing in you! That’d be like, not believing in my cousin because she lives in a different state! After all these years, I can’t ever think of you as not real.”  
  
“That’s why I’m not asking you to let go of me,” Jack said. “And…it’s hard to explain. But you can’t become us until we all let you go.” He gave Jamie a little smile. “In a world like this, we can only protect so many. We need you to create wonder, help others hope, make the memories you need, work so that your dreams and others’ dreams can come true, and bring joy to those around you.”  
  
“But…” Jamie folded his arms around himself. “I’m still just a kid. How can I do all that? And why can’t you still be around?”  
  
“You don’t have to do it all right now,” Jack said. “It’s for your whole life. And you won’t be a kid for long.” Sadness settled unfamiliarly on Jack’s face. “I can’t be around because I’m not a person, not exactly. But I think—I think that you’re a really good one, and you’re going to be an even better one.”_  
  
It’s about six months after that conversation, in the middle of the hottest part of the summer. Jamie wonders if he’s getting over it, or if secretly he’s thinking that Jack isn’t around because of the heat, and everything is normal.  
  
He wishes he could talk with his friends about Jack, but a few years ago he had casually mentioned going sledding with him, and his friends had looked at him, sad and a little angry—“Look, we all know you’re special,” someone had said, with the kind of bitterness that brooked no reply. It’s funny, he thinks. Then, I thought the fact that I still saw Jack after everyone else meant I would always see him.  
  
He kicks at the pale brown sand of the lake’s beach. He doesn’t want to dwell on any of this, not now, not when he’s supposed to be having fun with his friends during the last summer before they all go off to college. They’re already far out in the water, jumping off the pontoon platform and the tall, sun-bleached slide that’s bolted onto it, too.  
  
When they call to him one more time, he enters the water.  
  
They’ve jumped off the platform. They’ve slid down the slide. They’ve jumped off the slide. They’ve dived off the slide. They’ve swum under the platform. They’ve used the chain under the platform to climb down to the anchor and they’ve brought back handfuls of silt to prove that they did it and to throw at the others.   
  
So far, no one has dived off the slide, swum under the platform, and emerged on the other side with their hands full of lake bottom.  
  
Jamie hasn’t yet been quick enough to claim a challenge first, but this time he is. He laughs as he climbs up the slide, thinking nothing of how it sways. His friends laugh, too, telling him he’s going to belly flop, he’s going to owe them all ice cream, they’re not even going to look for him on the other side of the platform, he’s going to come up right where he goes in. Everything is normal, and Jamie responds to every line with the boast it invites.  
  
He stands on the top of the slide, half crouched, gripping the aluminum tubes on either side. The slide’s height amplifies the rocking of the platform. Jamie knows, as he’s known for every other jump, that he’ll have to time his leap precisely and not hesitate, not do anything halfway, in order to be fully clear of the platform when he dives. He’s done this many times before, and everything is normal.   
  
But chance is also normal. Jamie doesn’t think about it later, but it really could have been anything that day. The sun on a wave, a gust of wind, some half-heard unexpected comment from one of his friends below. A cloud passing over the sun, the squawking of a bird, some water on the slide that had pooled on the old plastic in the depressions where countless feet had pressed while sliders and divers had steadied themselves.   
  
Whatever it was, one of his feet slips when he pushes off against the slide.   
  
Even when you push with all your strength, it doesn’t do much good if you’re pushing against empty air.  
  
One leg is enough, though, and he clears the edge of the platform—barely. And he gets his hands in front of his head to break the water—barely. It’s not a good-looking dive: there’s a huge, showy splash. Jamie’s friends think he aimed for the edge of the platform. They think he was showing off, and they laugh. They turn and look at the other side of the platform. Jamie will be up soon.  
  
Under the water, Jamie’s mind and legs are still flailing from his misfire of a leap. His hands sting from hitting the surface wrong. In his thrashing, he kicks one of the pontoons. Is he already under the platform? Maybe his dive would have led him there, but he’s not sure. When he opens his eyes he can’t see anything that makes sense. The water in this lake is always murky, and he and his friends have been stirring up the bottom around the platform.   
  
His hands hit a pontoon, now. Which way is the center of the platform? Which way is the anchor chain? Jamie is thinking, perhaps not clearly, that he _must_finish the challenge now, because he will _not_ want to have to do this again.  
  
When he lets go of the pontoon, everything disappears, no matter how he swings his arms around. That can’t be right. He’s almost six feet tall, and the platform is only ten feet square. He should be able to swipe at the center no matter where he is! He swims a stroke into darkness, and his head hits the underside of the platform before it hits air. Of course. He should have remembered. With a half-dozen teenagers on it, the platform floats low.   
  
Jamie realizes he had been really looking for that air. He thinks that at the moment his foot slipped he let out much of the breath he had been holding for the challenge.  
  
Where is the chain? He doesn’t want to do this again. He just needs the mud, he needs the mud and then he can climb out, swim out.   
  
It should be impossible to lose something in a ten foot by ten foot space. It should be impossible to get lost in a ten foot by ten foot space.   
  
Jamie is frustrated but not fearful. He wants air, but he isn’t afraid. He can’t see anything, but he isn’t afraid. The platform is only ten feet by ten feet. Nothing bad has ever happened to him at this lake. The worst thing that could happen is earning the scorn of his friends for failing the first challenge he was able to lead.  
  
This is not the worst thing that could happen. Up on the platform, a moment of silence hits Jamie’s friends as they all realize what’s the worst thing that could happen.   
  
Under green water, on the side of the platform opposite of the one Jamie jumped off of, the others can see the anchor chain stretching out and down into the lake bed. No one has seen Jamie climb down it.  
  
But nothing bad has happened to any of them at this lake, either. And they are all very young, and no one wants to be the first to admit that they are afraid for Jamie.  
  
Under the platform, Jamie is growing frustrated with his friends for weighing it down. This is not the thought he should be having, but he is having it because he wants air.  
  
And then something happens that finally makes Jamie afraid. Something grabs him around his waist and pulls him down, down, down into nothingness. He can’t see a thing, but whatever’s holding on to him is too strong to fight. He thinks of lake monsters and then he thinks he may have tried to yell. And he thinks maybe something bad will have happened at this lake in not very long.   
  
But then whatever holds him is pushing him, up, up, up, and his face is in the air and he’s breathing before his brain is able to tell him he can. He’s breathing and he’s on the other side of the platform and he’s hanging onto the stretched-back anchor chain—oh, oh, no wonder he couldn’t find it—and his friends are cheering louder than they did for any of the other challenges, and they don’t even know if he got the mud yet (which he didn’t).   
  
But there’s something in his hand, a stone? That would be even better, rarer, but how did he get it? He holds onto it tightly while pulling himself to the platform by the chain until it disappears underneath—he shudders and hopes no one sees—and he has to swim. His friends pull him up, and they don’t ask him about the mud. They’re bored of this, so bored, they say, and it’s getting cloudy. There are three puffy white clouds in the sky, but Jamie doesn’t look up to check. He opens his hand, and it’s not a stone he’s holding. It’s a handful of mud, like you would get from clenching it tightly in your fist, and it’s frozen solid.  
  
The others see it, too. They make tentative movements toward the finger marks frozen in the mud with their own hands, and Jamie curls his fingers around the mud protectively. His fingers don’t quite fit into the marks.  
  
“No,” he says. “He…he told me he was letting go of me.”  
  
“Jack,” someone says. It’s the first time any of them have said his name in years.  
  
Jamie nods.   
  
“It’s good that he didn’t,” someone else says. “It’s good that…you’re special.” There’s no bitterness anymore.  
  
There’s no bitterness anymore, and the conversation can go on. “What else did he say to you?” another someone asks, and Jamie finds he’s able to answer.  
  
They talk on the gently rocking platform until the handful of mud has melted and started to dry, until the clouds really do roll in. They swim back and dry off and head for the Snow Cap ice cream stand. During all this time, they only see each other.  
  
But now, that’s enough. 


End file.
